Italian Film Festival

The Mercenary

Info: Corbucci, Italy, 1968, 110 mins, Blu-ray Disc

Language: In English

Director: Sergio Corbucci

Cast: Franco Nero, Jack Palance, Tony Musante, Giovanna Ralli

Showtimes

Sunday January 10, 2016 - 4:15 pm

A well-groomed, greedy Polish mercenary aids a Mexican Revolutionary against the repressive government, while butting heads with a young female radical and an American rival. Quentin Tarantino rates this little-seen spaghetti western higher even than Once Upon a Time in the West. Sergio Corbucci (Django) directs, from a story by Franco Solinas (Battle of Algiers), and the glorious score is by the great Ennio Morricone (Tarantino lifted some of it for Kill Bill). With Franco Nero and Jack Palance as “Curly”.

“Anticipates The Wild Bunch in its near-hysterical local colour (a troupe of clown toreadors, a religious procession with concealed machine guns) compounded by a frenzied revolutionary joie de vivre and a suitably excessive Morricone score” (J. Hoberman, Film Comment).